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BULLETIN of the 



Some Educational and Legislative Needs of South 
Carolina Mill Villages 



ISSUED QUARTERLY 
BY THE UNIVERSITY 



No. 24 

PARTS 
January, 191 



COLUMBIA, S. C. 
Second-Class Mail Matter 




CONTENTS: 

PAGE 

Some Educational and Legislative Needs oi South Carolina 

Mill Villages 3 

What Religious Denominations and Colleges are Doing in 

South Carolina lor the Mill Village Populations 16 

What the State Colleges and Institutions are Doing for the 

Mill Village Populations 20 



Sund 



ries. 



Practical Courses Suggested ior Mill Men and Boys Night 

Classes 24 



iw i W i y 



Copies of this address or of my addresses 
THE SOUTH CAROLINA COTTON MI 
and 
THE SOUTH CAROLINA COTTON MILL V 
will be gladly sent on request. 

THOMAS F. PARKE 
(ireeuvi 



Some Educational and Legislative Needs of South 
Carolina Mill Villages 



By THOMAS F. PARKER, 

President of the Monaghan Mills, 

greenville, s. c. 

In substance an address on this subject delivered at the 
University of South Carolina to the Faculty and Student 
Body on January 18th, 1911. 



Some Educational and Legislative Needs of 
South Carolina Mill Villages 



By THOMAS F. PARKER 



At no other time in its history has South CaroHna made 
such rapid progress towards plenty and distinction as in 
the last few years. Great changes are taking place rapidly 
and we must be on the alert to apply old principles to new 
issues that we may use each new opportunity and avoid 
new dangers. The two most powerful industrial agencies 
in the recent development of our State are agriculture 
and the manufacture of cotton. 

With agricultural prosperity, agricultural education is 
being pushed to a remarkable extent; by Nation and State, 
by individuals, by the Southern Railway, by the Cotton 
Seed Crushers Association, by the rural improvement as- 
sociation, by corn, cotton and tomato expositions, and in 
innumerable other ways. The farm co-operative demon- 
stration work alone is spending in South Carolina in 
twelve months $29,000.00, and the Peabody Board has 
appropriated for rural education during a like period 
$6,200.00. A State law now requires that elementary 
agriculture shall be taught in the schools of the State. 

Our General Assembly in 19 10 by joint resolution ap- 
pointed a commission to make necessary investigations and 
report at this session upon the advisability of establishing 
agricultural schools and experimental stations in the State. 

This commission recommends among other things that ; 
"Whereas there are a numl^er of forces now at work in 
South Carolina to improve the agricultural methods and 
conditions of the Commouiwealth among which may be 
named Clemson College, with its agricultural courses, its 



extension work, farmers' institute work, rural school work, 
and its experiment station, and the station's bulletins; the 
State Department of Agriculture, Commerce and Indus- 
tries, with its many branches of work in office and field; 
the United States Farm Demonstration Work, carrying its 
instruction to the farmer and the farm home; the boys' 
corn club, and the girls' tomato club work, under the 
jont direction of the farm demonstration work and the 
County Superintendents of Education ; and the United 
States Office of Farm Management; the courses of agri- 
culture and school gardening at Winthrop College and at 
the University of South Carolina; the distribution of 
Government bulletins on school agriculture by the State 
Supervisor of rural schools ;" etc. 

Therefore, that there should be created a State Com- 
mission on Agricultural Education which should be 
specifically charged with the making and execution of 
general plans for Agricultural Education in South Caro- 
lina ; that special courses, designed to prepare teachers, for 
the teaching of the subject of agriculture in the elementary 
schools should be offered by Clemson College, Winthrop 
College, and the State University; and that a summer nor- 
mal school for the agricultural instruction O'f teachers 
should be held at Clemson College each vacation season ; that 
an appropriation should be made by the General Assembly 
for the support of elementary and secondary schools which 
undertake in a satisfactory manner to introduce agriculture 
into their curriculums; that teachers who have prepared 
themselves to teach agriculture and who have proper cre- 
dentials should receive from the State's appropriation a 
small compensation in addition to the salary paid by the 
district trustees. 

Admitting that agriculture is still the greatest industry 
of this State, and highly improving the manner in which 
Agricultural Education is now being promoted among 
our people, I ask in all earnestness if South Carolina 



should not also at the same time seek to provide adequate 
industrial and vocational education for all its people in- 
cluding its manufacturing" population. 

The pay rolls of the mills each year add to the State's 
wealth approximately $12,000,000.00, their dividends add 
approximately $3,500,000.00, and their taxable values are 
about $25,000,000.00. (or about one-tenth of the State's 
total taxable values.) The mills also pay into the State 
Treasury a franchise tax of about $25,000.00 per annum; 
and consume eighty per cent, of the amount O'f cotton 
raised in the State. In thirty years they have doubled the 
average daily wage of their operatives, and indirectly have 
caused the same advance in the wages of all unskilled 
white workers in the State by offering employment at the 
increased price to all the unemployed. 

The collecting of the less prosperous of South Caro- 
lina's rural population into villages and their discipline and 
training in regular habits in our coarse goods cotton mills 
should only be the first step towards greater manufactur- 
ing activity and greater prosperity. Our cotton mills and 
cotton mill villages should Ije places where operati\'es are 
preparing for many kinds of industries requiring higher 
skill ; we are only beginners, and our eyes should be firmly 
fixed on the possibilities of the future and not too much 
on the past. Each advance must be but a temporary resting 
place unless we are to be laggards in the race upon which 
we have entered. The State cannot allow its manufactur- 
ing development to limit itself to any one kind of manu- 
facturing; it would be suicidal for its manufacturing to 
confine itself to coarse goods cotton mills which all the 
world over pay the minimum wage to industrial operatives 
because their labor is unskilled. Di\ersified manufactur- 
ing- requiring greater skill, or the making of finer goods 
would double or quadruple the State's total pay roll and 
the earnings of its individual operatives. 

The times are calling for education and legislation 
and new lines. If we aspire to be leaders we should act. 



It must not be forgotten that the State's Educational In- 
stitutions exist primarily for the benefit of the State, and 
that South Carolina's rank in the industrial world of the 
next generation depends largely upon the instruction she 
gives her younger operatives, and upon their environments 
in her mill villages. Adequate industrial and vocational 
schools for her boys, dignifying labor and producing 
efficiency, and the improAement of mill village conditions, 
are necessary if she is to attain to industrial eminence. 

Our operatives, homogenius. English speaking, bone 
of our bone, flesii of our flesh, sometimes connected with 
our best families, are the material from which a high class 
of industrial workers can be made. Nowhere else in the 
United States is there as good a class so accessible to in- 
struction, only needing the proper kind of education to 
develop the highest efficiency. Tliey are a marked 
contrast to the mixed operatives of many nationalities, 
habits and tongues to be found today in the industrial com- 
munities of other sections. 

Though South Carolina has great cause for jM-ide in 
the rapidity with which she has built her cotton mills, and 
in their standard of construction and equipment, and in the 
way in which their managements have collected together 
and utilized to the great profit of all concerned our un- 
employed people; yet true it is that she has not an equal 
cause for pride in her cotton mill village conditions, or in 
the educational facilities that the State and other institu- 
tions and individuals are offering her textile workers. 

Especially is tliis so if her 150 villages are considered 
and not only a selected one of some 20 of her best which 
is almost invariably done when this subject is mentioned. 

So rapid has l)een the development of manufacturing 
in this State, and so little interest has been shown in the 
education of its mill village population that to the ])resent 
we have made no provision for their special needs, but 
they must either use a system of education and studies 
prepared for the agricultural population or go without 



any. This oversight permeates practically the entire edu- 
cational system of the State. The University of South 
Carolina is almost the only exception. 

Clemson College, South Carolina's agricultural and 
mechanical college, with its income approximating $250,- 
000.00 per annum, has a struggling textile department to 
the maintenance of which some $6,000.00 is apportioned. 
It is not suited in any respect for the vocational training 
of mill boys ; it does not attract them ; but small per- 
centage of its graduates work permanently in mills in any 
capacity. As a college it sets out to impart a liberal edu- 
cation and expert textile knowledge to a class more favor- 
ed socially and financially than mill people. Thoug'h the 
colleg'e is not situated in a mill center, which is the natural 
location for the textile education of mill operatives, it 
could undertake for textile workers extension work, in- 
stitute work, and school work, similar to such work which it 
has undertaken during the last few years for the agricultural 
population. 

Winthrop College is near mills, Init only its kinder- 
garten department has to the present time interesed it- 
self in mill people. 

Though these conditions, as before stated, are to a 
certain extent due to the fact that manufacturing on a 
large scale is new to this State there is no reason for them 
to continue. 

Why should we not ha\e a State Supervisor of mill 
village schools? And why could these schools not give 
some industrial training? 

Why should there not l)e created a State Commission 
on industrial and vocational training similar to the one 
proposed for agricultural education, with an adequate 
appropriation for conducting its work? 

What is wanted for mill men and boys is vocational 
instruction adapted to local needs gnven in congenial sur- 
roundings which shall increase their earning capacity and 
make them more efficient operatives, also helping them to 



become overseers and superintendents. This instruction 
might be given in night classes near the mills so that 
pupils while staying at home could earn a living during 
the day and practically apply at their work the theoretical 
instruction which they receive. 

Some of the studies which interest South Carolina 
mill men and boys are "group courses ;" English ; mill 
calculations of speeds, drafts, etc., etc. ; mechanical and 
free hand drawing; textile designing; practical courses in 
electricity and steam engineering, etc., etc. 

On account of the antecedents of these people the 
instruction should be largely individual and especially 
adapted to the need of each student, be he young or old, 
starting with the alphabet if necessary. Elementary com- 
mon school instruction is often necessary with these people 
as a preparation for vocational studies. Such individual 
instruction requires a large number of teachers in propor- 
tion to students but does not call for any special equip- 
ment other than ordinary school rooms. 

Another great need of mill villages for the education 
of the rising generation is properly conducted nursery 
kindergartens. Kindergartens may be of doubtful l)enefit 
to children of educated and refined parents, and are not 
adapted on account of the youth of the children to the 
needs of a scattered agricultural population, but they are 
unquestionably of the greatest benefit in commencing the 
education of children who have otherwise around them 
only the influences of mill village homes, and they can be 
made very accessible to such children living as they do in 
thickly settled villages. It should also be borne in mind 
that these children stop going to school at 12 years of age. 
Our present State law does not allow any State funds to 
l)e used for this purpose. 

It is very desirable to teach the boys of our agri- 
cultural population practical agricultural knowledge and 
habits, but is it not equally important to teach all our 
girls to cook and sew? Mill village girls are specially in 



need of such training because they cannot learn these 
things at home. It may be argued that such instruction 
costs money, but it would be money well invested. Every 
year we are more prosperous, and this will continue if 
among other necessary precautions we wisely educate our 
people. It has been estimated that South Carolina's cotton 
crop this year will sell for $96,000,000.00 which, it may 
be mentioned, it considerably less than the annual sale of 
cotton mill goods now manufactured by its mills. There 
is no wiser way to spend some of this money than, on 
education. 

Important as is the development of our industrial 
classes for the State, there is still another ground upon 
which I place my present appeal to you for the 150,000 of 
your fellow citizens who comprise our mill village popula- 
tion. 

The world has never followed cold reasoning. 
Before, we learned how to think very well, we felt 
pretty accurately. The men in this audience who will 
act on what I am saying are those who feel human 
needs and have a personal sympathy for their less fortu- 
nate fellows. Friends! 150,000 of South Carolina's need- 
iest sons and daughters ask of you the opportunity to help 
themselves. They ask of you who have had opportunities 
in the past to share the results of these with them. They 
ask that you give them of your time, thought and under- 
standing; they do not want and would not accept charity; 
their great need is mental stimulus and guidance and 
educational facilities; they compose the poorest of our 
white population and when coming to the mills left their 
homes and friends, and found themselves landless and 
almost penniless, surrounded by conditions entirely new. 
All that they brought with them was their power to labor, 
and their friends are few. It is upon them that slavery 
and war and reconstruction have most heavily said their 
blighting hands. From lack of past advantages and op- 
portunities they often have to learn even the most ele- 



mentar_y rules of living and behavior, which would ordi- 
narily be taken for granted as our common heritage. It 
is for this reason, and not from mental incapacity or choice, 
that they do not mingle with our towns' people, and that 
they are sometimes hard to teach. 

All South Carolina mill villages have a church, school 
and doctors, but as a rule these are inferior, and the in- 
fluences in some mill villages are far from what they 
should be; while accessory religious, educational and wel- 
fare agencies in villages, paid for by South Carolina 
sources other than the mill corporations and the villagers 
are conspicuous by their absence or their inadequacy, 
though our towns can no longer plead the poverty which 
in the past alone justified the mill \illage neglect that has 
existed. 

Few persons realize the actual educational conditions 
wliich pertain in mill villages or liow little has been done to 
reach the hearts and minds of these people; though the 
mill companies often build the school houses and con- 
tril)ute to the salaries of the mill village public school 
teachers, even then only a small percentage of these receive 
in South Carolina over $360.00 per annum (or a little 
more than the average mill operative, who, including 
children 12 years of age, receives $1.10 per day, or about 
$330.00 per annum) in marked contrast to mill foreman 
of departments who receive as a rule from $1,000.00 to 
$1500.00 per annum, or to mill superintendents who re- 
ceive luuch more. 

In many mill villages the school buildings and teach- 
ing force are altogether too small for the population. For 
instance, if a village with a kindergarten and two teachers, 
which are suitable for a population of 800, should increase 
its population to four or five thousand the building or its 
teaching force w^ould probably not be increased. It is not 
uncommon for a school teacher with a salary approximat- 
ing that of an average mill hand to teach fifty or many 
more poorly graded pupils (I have heard of one such 

10 



teacher with 90 pupils) and these teachers are usually 
without the instruction or control of any educational 
supervision worth mentioning. 

There is a great opportunity to educate by night 
classes those mill villages adjacent to towns from which 
] believe many college professors or city teachers or ex- 
perts in various lines of work could be enlisted according 
to their ability tO' instruct night classes in branches needed 
by mill boys and girls instead of allowing many of our 
brightest mill men to be denied educational advantages, 
or for lack of home opportunities to use expensive and un- 
satisfactory correspondence schools located in distant 
States such as Illinois or Pennsylvania, and to allow our 
girls to grow up lacking in much needed instruction. 

There is also much other teaching called for in mill 
villages besides the night courses, which must be done 
through employed experts. Trained district ' nurses in 
addition to relieving sickness and saving lives can do a 
wonderful educational work by house visits, loan closets 
and health clubs ; kindergarten nurseries caring for chil- 
dren from three to six years of age are splendidly adapted 
to the needs of a mill village ; nowhere can settlement work 
be more effective, reaching out as it does with its teaching 
and helpful influences to the individual homes; educational 
gatherings with illustrated stereopticon slides and with 
good speakers brought from without the mill village com- 
munity exercise a most marked influence. There are also 
effective means which can be employed to establish much 
needed sympathetic relations between the villages and 
the towns ; the Winthrop College kindergarten is doing 
some fine work of this character. The mill school build- 
ings sometimes with small changes and additions can be 
used to great advantage for night classes or as social 
centers. 

I have been told by prominent men and women that 
they would be very glad to do such work in mill villages 
if it was organized; and if they were invited to do it by 

H 



the mill presidents whom they have been led to suppose 
would resent their initiating any educational or philan- 
thropic movement in their villages unless invited by them 
so to do. 

While it may be true, as has been asserted to me, 
that there are some mills which in varying degrees are 
willing for their operatives to remain shiftless, ignorant 
and dependent, recognizing no oblig'ation to change these 
conditions and believing that such labor is low priced and 
easily controlled, and which therefore find plausible rea- 
sons for objecting to outsiders interesting themseh'es in 
stu(l3^ing or bettering their conditions; yet such mills are 
few and the large majority of the mill villages are what 
the neighboring communities and their educational insti- 
tutions have willingly let them remain, for in the last 
analysis the condition of mill villages is dependent on pub- 
lic effort and public opinion. It would be a blight, most 
far reaching and insidious, on the future prosperity of our 
State, and destructive to our Democratic institutions if we 
had in oiir mill villages even in a remote degree a system 
resembling the feudal system, where the people's home life 
is under the domination of the omployer; and I refuse to 
believe that such exists anywhere in South Carolina. It 
is unfortunately true, however, that there is a very general 
tendency among all classes of our people to throw the 
whole responsibilty for the education and welfare of the 
village population on the mill President and the mill 
corporations where it only partly belongs. 

How can leading denominations and educational in- 
stitutions satisfactorily explain to themselves the presence 
of 150,000 of the most need}^ of our white population in 
mill villages adjacent to our towns without more organized 
effort on their part to help them than their records show? 

In mill villages there is a splendid opening for in- 
stitutional churches through which town congregations 
could do a noble work. 

Has there been an adequate effort to furnish for 

12 



the villagers competent leaders, teachers, deaconesses, 
trained nnrses, trained kindergartenders or trained instruc- 
tors of cooking and sewing? Is the church justified in 
confining its work with these people almost entirely to 
spiritual and denominational teachings as though they had 
only souls and not minds and bodies ? 

The small number of prominent preachers in South 
Carolina who interest themselves practically and at personal 
sacrifice in the mill population or its problenis is very 
noticeable, as is also the incapacity of the workers who are 
usually furnished. Special preparation and a special call- 
ing are needed for a competent mill village worker, but 
should such men not be hunted for and when found should 
they not receive high respect and financial support? 

It would be amusing- if it were not so pathetic to 
hear how many persons when asked to contribute time or 
money to educate the mill village population express the 
fear of "pauperizing them." In fact one is almost led by 
interested parties to believe that the greatest danger 
threatening our village population is that of being "pauper- 
ized;" and the danger is only theoretic as there is in South 
Carolina mill village conditions absolutely nothing upon 
which to base such a fear. 

To me it is a very sad spectacle to see in South Caro- 
lina a strong tendency to keep through neglect the mill 
people in an inferior class or caste, and to blame them for 
not mingling with others when it is their antecedents and 
lack of past opportunities which compel them to stay apart, 
and which they are unable to free themselves from except 
by a very slow process or till helped to do so by others. 
It is only our lack of sympathy and understanding that 
makes us unconscious of these fetters and how to break 
them. 

Before closing I wish to say a few words concern- 
ing legislation affecting mill villages. The best way to 
prevent some kinds of class legislation is by destroying 
the class lines through education. It would be a great 

13 



mistake to think that the majority of our mill people have 
inherited traits which will prevent them being good, 
efficient citizens; on the contrary cliildren in the average 
mill school are average South Carolina children as to 
ability, (but below the average in general education and 
training) and the kind of men and women they become 
depends on the education and environments given them by 
the citizens of our State. 

We are fortunate in South Carolina in having had 
on the whole good and conservative legislation. There 
is in my opinion however some legislation which would 
affect mill people wdiich is nuich needed. Among which 
I would mention a law to make education compulsory; 
a law recpiiring marriage licenses and registration (to 
reduce the number of desertions) ; a law preventing chil- 
dren marrying (as too many do at present) ; a law requir- 
ing the registration of births and deaths; and most of all 
an employers' accident indemnity law modeled on the Ger- 
man law, upon wliich latter I will dwell at more length 
as such a law is new to many of us, and is receiving a 
great deal of attention at the present time throughout the 
United States. 

The German law is a system of compulsory insurance 
to which both employees and employers contribute. Every 
injured German workman, no matter how he was injured, 
whether by his own fault or by the fault of his employer, 
draws a regular weekly pension either from the sickness 
insurance fund or from the accident insurance fund until 
he is able to go to work again. 

The difference between the German situation and 
the South Carolina situation is the difference between that 
modern, scientific, peace making device called "compulsory 
insurance," and that mediaeval, unscientific, strife breed- 
ing contrivance called "employers' liability." 

The weapons of "compulsory insurance" are safety 
devices and convalescent homes; the weapons of "em- 
ployers' liability" are lawyers, judges and instructions to 
juries. 

14 



"Germany pays its injured, superannuated, and other 
pensioners something like $126,000,000.00 a year, of this 
sum the workmen furnish one-half. American manufac- 
turers spend about as much as this total out of their own 
pockets, but only thirty per cent of it ever reaches the 
injured. On the one hand the remedy for sightless eyes, 
maimed bodies and helpless widows and hungry children 
is long, expensive litigation, on the other it is prompt and 
continuous medical service, and a regular, weekly income." 

"In eleven years, from 1894 to 1905, the Employers' 
Liability Companies of America took $99,959,076.00 in 
premiums from American employers. How much did 
they pay out in compensation to injured workmen? Just 
$43,599,498.00. or 43 per cent, of what they took in, and 
of this sum about one-third went to pay the lawyers of the 
injured parties. Seventy per cent for expenses! thirty 
per cent, for compensation ! It would take an ingenious 
man to devise a more wasteful system." x\nd the laws of 
our State should change this system which is ours. 

If you are interested, these statements and much more 
on this subject can be found in a much quoted article en- 
titled "Pensioners of Peace," which appeared in Every- 
body's Magazine, October, 1908. 



35 



APPENDIX 

"A" 

What Religious Denominations and Colleges are 
doing in South Carolina for a mill village population of 
150,000 people with funds and workers derived from 
sources mostly other than the mills and villages. This list 
seeks to give complete information of all such work done 
in the State. The villages suffer as much from the in- 
efficienc}' of the workers who are sent, and from the lack 
of constructive methods in handling the situation as they 
do from the smallness of the amounts spent on them. 

BAPTIST DENOMINATION. 

Mission Board gave in 12 months (1909) to sup- 
plement preacher's salaries $6,380.00, and supported in 
whole or in part 13 women misionaries at a cost of 
$5,150.00. Three evangelists were employed at a cost 
of $3,000.00, who devoted a part of their time to mill vil- 
lages. 

The mill village churches, however, contribute a 
considerable sum to the general church objects, the amount 
of which could not be ascertained. To the writer's surprise 
he found that at his mill the appropriation from the 
mission board to the Baptist village church in 1909 was 
$225.00; its membership was 245. The amounts con- 
tributed by it were as follows: pastor's salary $400.00; 
missions $135.60; orphanage $60.00; old preachers $8.18; 
poor $6.04; incidentals $115.37; Total $725.19; subscribed 
to Furman University to be paid in five annual installments 
$150.00; the appropriation from the board for 1910 was 
$100.00, and the contributions of the church were as 
follows: Foreign Missions, $50.00; Home Missions, 
$35.00; State Missions, $30.00; Orphanage through Sun- 

16 



day School, $50.00; the Poor in Village, $20.00; Visiting 
Ministers, $27.00; Aged Ministers, $10.00; Ministerial 
Education, $3.00; Current Support Furnian University, 
Sj.oo; Pastor's Salary $400.00; Incidentals, $86.00; Total, 
$718.00; Subscription to Southern Baptist Theological 
Seminary to be paid in five annual installments, $137.50. 

Fitniian Ujiivcrsity has offered one year's free tui- 
tion to a mill boy as a reward for good work in a Y. M. 
C. A. night classes ; some of its students teach in a mill 
Sunday School ; its President and several of its professors, 
on request, occasionally give popular lectures in mill vil- 
lages; one of its professors teaches regularlv in a mill 
Y. M. C. A. night class. 

Greenville Female College : The Y. \\'. C. A. con- 
ducts a Sunday mill afternoon club in co-operation with 
a mill Y. W. C. A. The club does mission study; four 
girls have undertaken this work, two coming out each 
Sunday. 

The Kindergarten Department of G. F. C. supplies, 
without charge, teachers for Camperdown Mill Kinder- 
garten and city poor, and sends assistants to sex'cral mill 
kindergartens. All kindergarten teachers are urged to 
join the story telling and game league. A loan liljrarv is 
being started for the future use of all kindergarten 
teachers. 

The Coiiuie-Ma.vzi'ell Orphanage is boarding, clothing 
and educating a total of 230 children. Of these, sixtj 
are mill children. 

EPISCOPAL DENOMINATION. 

At Olympia Mills, Columbia, S. C, there is a brick 
church and a parish-house, containing amusement hall and 
medical dispensary : a clergyman and deaconesses are in 
charge; cost of maintenance about $1500.00 per annum, 
which is principallv paid by Trinity Church, Columbia, 
S. C. 

For the Graniteville, Bath, Lang'ley and Clearwater Mills 

17 



there is a church and a school-house ; night classes are 
taught; a clergyman and a deaconess have been in charge 
at a cost of about $1500.00 per annum. 

At the Charleston Bagging Factory, there is main- 
tained a night school and missions, and at a Spartanburg 
mill and at Ninety Six there are missions. 

At Calhoun Falls Mill there is a chapel and regular 
services are held. 

The Orphanage Department of the Church Home at 
Yorkville, S. C, has seventy children in the orphanage, 
which are being boarded, clothed and educated. Of these, 
25 are from mill villages. 

LUTHERAN DENOMINATION. 

The Olympia Mills has a resident minister at a cost 
of $700.00 per annum. Till this year, the Olympia Mills 
have been the only mill work. 

The Newberry Mill church is helped to the extent of 
$500.00. 

Newberry College offers one scholarship in each of 
the two mill villages to that student (boy or girl) in the 
mill school who makes the highest average mark of 
scholarship. A scholarsliip means full tuition for four 
years. Only one of the scholarships is being utilized 
this session. A number of the students teach in the two 
mill Sunday Schools. 

METHODIST DENOMINATION. 

Board of Missions gave in 12 months to supplement 
mill preacher's salaries $6,050.00. and supports five dea- 
conesses and helpers in whole or in part at a cost of 
$1,475.00. 

For the erection of church buildings there was given 
$705.00. 

Mill village churches have regular and special assess- 
ments for missions and other church purposes outside of 
the mill villages, which aggregate a considerable amount. 



The writer could not ascertain this amount, but he 
found that the Methodist church in his mill village with 
104 members, received in 1910 from the Home Mission 
Board $150.00, and contributed as follows: Pastor's 
Salary, $250.00; Presiding Iilder, $31.25; Missions, Con- 
ference Claims, etc., $140. 4r), a total of $421.71. 

The Cohimbla District pays $150.00 towards the sup- 
port of a woman heli>er at Langley. 

The Spartanburg Churches support a deaconesses at 
Spartan Mills. 

At Wofford College, ten students teach in night 
classes at the mills without financial compensation. The 
demand for these night classes is growing; professors 
give lectures in mill villages. 

Epivorth Orphanage boards, clothes and educates 
43 mill children. 

PRESBYTERIAN DENOMINATION. 

Bethel Presbytery maintains three missions: one in 
Chester and two in Rock Hill ; the three preachers give 
their entire time : three Sabbath Schools are kept up, cost 
$1900.00. 

Charleston Presbytery maintains a mission to opera- 
tives at Graniteville, cost $600.00. 

Enoree Presbytery maintains three missions to opera- 
tives at Spartanburg, Laurens and Greenville, cost $718.00. 

At Clinton; First Presbyterian Church has built a 
chapel at Lydia Cotton Mills and employs a pastor to 
preach twice monthly to mill people, and a woman worker. 

The Thornzvell Orphanage is boarding, clothing and 
educating 43 mill children. 

The Presbyterian College of South Carolina, at Clin- 
ton, S. C, has one student a Superintendent of a mill Sab- 
bath School and three others teach in the school ; the 
midweek mill prayer meeting is frequently attended and 
conducted by the college students. 

Chicora College ga\e last year one free scholarship 
to a young woman from the mills. This was used last 
vear, but is not being used this year. 

19 



"B" 



//7/a/ ilic State Colleges and Institutions are doing 
for the mill village populations. 

CLEMSOX AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 

Had in 19 lo, a student body of 653. Of these aljont 
35 were regular textile course students and six special 
two year textile course students. 

UNIVERSrrY OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 

The LIniversity offers an "A, B." course for social 
and religious workers. 

Some students and one of the faculty teach in mill 
Sunday Schools ; several students teach in mill night 
schools; one of the students assists in popular lectures at 
mills; several professors have given popular lectures at 
mills; one professor gives gymnasium instruction two 
nights weekly at a mill Y. M. C. A. ; several students 
from the mill villages have been given positions in the 
University to assist them get an education ; the President 
of the L'f^niversity in person has cordially invited the mill 
people to attend the University courses of popular lec- 
tures, concerts, etc., and has had conditions in mill villages 
presented concretely to the student body by competent 
speakers ; an alumunus has been for years the very suc- 
cessful principal of the Olympia Mills Schools. 

CONVERSE COLLEGE. 

Members of the College Faculty and students from 
time to tiine have taught in the mill Sunday Schools, and 
have occasionally assisted in church w'ork. 

WINTHROP COLLEGE. 

Normal & Industrial departments and Practice Home 
do no special work for mill people. 

20 



The Kindergarten Department, Miss Macfeat, Prin- 
cipal, maintains a l<indergarten at Arcade Mills and one 
at VVymojo Mills with mother's meetings, and social 
meetings for bo}-s and girls of the two mills ; friendly 
intercourse is promoted between the Winthrop Kinder- 
garten and the Mill Kindergarten children by socials. 
The Winthrop Kindergarten gives a "beautiful" Thanks- 
giving dinner which all the children enjoy together ; mill 
children are also invited to the Easter tgg hunt on Easter 
morning, and are brought on other occasions to the 
campus ; the Winthrop Kindergarten returns these visits 
to the mills; the object of these activities is to bring about 
a sympathetic relationship between all the children and to 
break down caste tendencies, destructive to our social 
fabric. Wymojo Mills has a social science class ; free 
tuition is given in the college kindergarten to mill children 
not in reach of other kindergartens. 



21 



"C" 



SUNDRIES. 

The SoutJi Carolina School Iniprovetnent Association, 
which is doing a line work for the rural schools, limits 
its work "to those schools situated outside of incorporated 
towns, and to communities not exceeding 400 in popula- 
tion," and this has practically excluded all the mill vil- 
lages. In the recent award of prizes one application was 
made in behalf of one mill \illage but it was not con- 
sidered for the reason stated above. 

The South Carolina Federation of Women's Clubs 
express a great interest in the mill population and approves 
of others working for it. 

Certain ladies from Greenville have agreed to give 
short travel talks in village home gatherings with the 
co-operation of a Mill Y. W. C. A. 

American Medical Association, Public Health Edu- 
cational Committee (Dr. Rosa H. Gantt, Spartanburg. S. 
C, Secretary for South Carolina) on request, will de- 
liver free lectures on h}giene and sanitary science. 

The South Carolina Child Labor Committee has the 
following members : 

Dr. Geo. B. Cromer, Chairman. Newberry, S. C. ; 
Mr. John Porter HolHs, Secretary and Treas., Rock Hill. 
S. C; Rt. Rev. W. A. Guerry, Charleston, S. C. ; Dr. 
Henry N. Snyder, Spartanburg, S. C, Prof. D. D. Wal- 
lace, Spartanburg, S. C, Rev. J. H. Harms, Newberry. S. 
C, Col. Knox, Livingston, of Bennettsville, S. C, Mr. Jos. 
A. McCullough, Greenville. S. C, Mr. J. E. McDonald, 
Winnsboro. S. C, Mrs. Robert Gibbes, Columbia S. C, 
Miss Sophie Carroll, Columbia. S. C, Miss Louise B. 
Poppenheini. Charleston, S. C, Dr. O. Y. Owings Colum- 
bia, S. C, Rev. C. E. Weltner, Columbia, S. C, Miss Ag- 

22 



lies McMaster, Columbus, S. C. Dr. S. C. Mitchell, Co- 
lumbia, S. C, Mr. Bright Williamson, Darlington S. C. 

The South Carolina Children's Home Society (Wm. 
B. Streeter, Superintendent, Greenville, S. C.) places desti- 
tute white children in suitable homes and has placed a 
number of mill children. There is also a similar insti- 
tution with head-quarters in Columbia, S. C. 



28 



"D" 

Among the practical courses suggested for mill men 
and boys night classes are the follozving, viz : 

Group courses; reading, writing, arithmetic, letter 
writing, substraction, multiplication, division, factors, 
multiplies, calculations, fractions decimals, percentage, in- 
terest, ratio, proportion and square foot. A one year's 
course. 

English : Fundamental parts of speech, exercises in 
parsing sentences, exercises in letter writing and composi- 
tion, the ability to express one's self clearly and accurately. 

Mill Calculation of speeds, drafts, twists, and pro- 
duction ; measuring motions, etc. ; various yarn calculations, 
cloth calculations and lay-outs. 

Mechanical Drawing: General principles of drawing, 
lettering of working drawings and reproduction of plates, 
else of instruments, sketching actual parts of actual ma- 
chinery, and a reproduction from these of sketches of 
accurate drawing. 

Textile Designing : Terms used in designing paper 
and its uses, the methods of representing weaving drafts 
on designing paper, explanations of harness and the plain 
drafts and calculation for single and ply yarns, cloth cal- 
culations and reproduction of fabrics. 

A practical course in electricity and steam engineering 
as applied to mill practices. 



24 



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